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The real negotiation is between humans on the one hand and chemistry and physics on the other. And chemistry and physics, unfortunately, don't bargain.

Bill McKibben

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Bill McKibben
Age: 64
Born: 1960
Born: December 8
Activist
Author
Climate Activist
Environmentalist
Writer
Palo Alto
California
Physics
Hand
Hands
Humans
Bargain
Real
Bargains
Negotiation
Chemistry
Unfortunately

More quotes by Bill McKibben

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The end of nature sours all my material pleasures. The prospect of living in a genetically engineered world sickens me. And yet it is toward such a world that our belief in endless material advancement hurries us. As long as that desire drives us, here is no way to set limits.
Bill McKibben
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For those of us who worry more about working people than about windfall profits for oil companies, it may net out. A better question is: what does it do to our economy if we manage to overheat the earth? This summer's drought provides a small taste.
Bill McKibben
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I think fracking for gas will reduce the incentive to turn to renewables, and I think it will do a lot of other damage across the countryside.
Bill McKibben
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Certainly, packets of sea ice, in say the Arctic, which have failed to fully reform in the last couple of years.
Bill McKibben
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The essential thing we need to understand is that the climate crisis is not some future threat, but a very present peril, the biggest one humans have ever encountered. Until we understand that, we'll dawdle.
Bill McKibben
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Climate change is the single biggest thing that humans have ever done on this planet. The one thing that needs to be bigger is our movement to stop it.
Bill McKibben
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Profiting from companies that are overloading the atmosphere with carbon and changing the atmosphere is wrong.
Bill McKibben
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I guess the underlying principle might be, don't make it too easy for them to stereotype you.
Bill McKibben
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[Kids] will grow up into a world that's difficult and wonderful, and they'll make the best of it they can, and hopefully help turn it in the best possible direction.
Bill McKibben
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To me, it's more important to take the 60-70% of people who really understand that there's a problem [of climate change] and get some percentage of them active than to try and stamp out the last embers of pre-scientific thought.
Bill McKibben
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The roof of my house is covered in solar panels. When Im home, Im a pretty green fellow.
Bill McKibben
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I just keep trying to explain what's going on with our planet - and now, to explain what's going on with our politics, which explains why we're not doing anything about the former.
Bill McKibben
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If one wanted to stigmaitise, that's how one would do it - lots and lots of people saying we're severing our ties.
Bill McKibben
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At the moment, the 4 percent of us in this country produce a quarter of the world's carbon dioxide - once you look at maps of rising sea levels and spreading mosquitoes, you realize that we've probably never figured out a way to hate our neighbors around the world much more effectively.
Bill McKibben
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I did very much like [Barack] Obama's attack on fossil fuel subsidies for fossil fuel companies. We asked for that in demonstrations and petitions, and now we'll try to push it forward.
Bill McKibben
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[Barack Obama] done some good things, he's done a couple of bad things. He's obsessed with this all of the above energy policy and... lots and lots of drilling in the States, so he's been weak on it.
Bill McKibben
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Everything that the administration has done has been counterproductive.
Bill McKibben
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Advent: the time to listen for footsteps - you can't hear footsteps when you're running yourself.
Bill McKibben
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We have to figure out ways to scare and entice our leaders more effectively than the fossil fuel industry has managed to scare and entice them. They've got the big checkbooks. We've got to have the big crowd.
Bill McKibben
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... the constant flow of images undercuts the sense that there's actually something wrong with the world. How can there really be a shortage of whooping cranes when you've seen a thousand images of them - seen ten times more images than there are actually whooping cranes left in the wild?
Bill McKibben